DALLAS (AP) - Viewed by some as a place of
rehabilitation, Texas prisons have also become a refuge for
several doctors with troubled pasts, The Dallas Morning News
reported Sunday.

The newspaper identified a former Michigan
doctor, now a psychiatrist in East Texas, as one of eight
physicians who practiced at state prisons last year after
discipline by medical review boards.

The state of Michigan in June 1990 revoked Dr.
Robert A. Komer's medical license for sexually abusing six
patients. One attempted suicide after an encounter with Komer,
according to the newspaper.

Komer did not contest allegations made in sworn
affidavits that he drugged several severely depressed patients
and then fondled them. Or that he instructed a woman with a
personality disorder to perform oral sex on him at the end of
therapy sessions.

Five of the cited doctors are practicing with
restrictions ordered by the Texas Board of Medical Examiners,
with three others on probation as recently as 1994.

State medical officers said the doctors were
hired before a change initiated two years ago that has moved
prison units into a managed care system.

With almost 140 doctors on staff, it is not
unusual that some would have problems, said Dr. Michael Warren,
health care director for the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice.

He said quality medical care at prison units is
carefully monitored by supervisors, with backup available where
needed.

Prison medical staff members previously were
state Department of Criminal Justice employees. In the new
system, doctors and hospital and emergency services are provided
under blanket contracts with the University of Texas Medical
Branch at Galveston and the Texas Tech University Health Science
Center.

Medical personnel of the criminal justice
department, including the cited doctors, were retained in the
transition, said Dr. Jason Calhoun, medical director at the UT
Medical Branch, which oversees prison units where the eight
doctors work.